Obama lacks legal authority to make risk-corridor payments even if they are budget-neutral. CRS says agencies are prohibited “from making payments in the absence of a valid appropria-tion”; that Obamacare’s risk-corridor section “would not appear to constitute an appropriation”; that agencies “may not create a revolving fund absent specific authorizing legislation,” and that “there does not appear to be sufficient statutory language to create a revolving fund.”

Senator Jeff Sessions recently testified that the “legislation establishing Medicare Part D included a mandatory appropriation,” whereas Obamacare “contains no such language.”

Liberals say that making the risk corridors budget-neutral by law will lead to higher premiums in the Obamacare exchanges. But that would be true only if, in the absence of such legislation, insurers’ losses would have been covered by taxpayers. If the risk corridors were really going to be budget-neutral, as Obama has said and the CBO (taking his word for it) has echoed, such a law wouldn’t raise insurance premiums in the exchanges one bit.

The CBO first scored the risk corridors as providing an $8 billion surplus. But after Obama’s payoff to insurers, the CBO now scores them as budget-neutral. This legislation would merely require such budget-neutrality as a matter of law, rather than as a matter of executive whim.

Summation

Such legislation would fight corporate welfare, help Main St. Americans, and thwart Obamacare.

Related

A study indicates insurers have kept their Obamacare premiums artificially low as they have expected to be bailed out by taxpayers—so taxpayers dodged a bullet when the cromnibus stopped the bailout, and the true and honest cost of Obamacare’s coercive mandates will more likely be felt going forward.

President Obama is effectively using the “Three R’s”—risk adjustment, reinsurance, and risk corridors—to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to his insurance allies who might otherwise balk at his lawless implementation of Obamacare.